CHRIS SCHILLIG: No-go vote for green

Quietly -- one might be tempted to say "cravenly" -- Gov. Kasich signed a bill Friday night to put a two-year hold on renewable energy and energy-efficiency requirements in Ohio.

The hotly contested SB 310 gives a pass to companies responsible for spewing pollutants into the air and sends a vote of no confidence to the state's budding -- and job-creating -- green industry. Not coincidentally, the legislation is supported by the Americans for Prosperity, which in turn is backed by right-leaning billionaires David and Charles Koch. This is, after all, an election year for Kasich.

The problem is not so much the two-year holding pattern that the new legislation creates for utility companies to generate more power from renewable resources. The more insidious concern is the bill's creation of a committee to make recommendations on future energy-related legislation.

Prior to Kasich's on-the-q.t. signing, Ohio was required to generate 12.5 percent of its energy from renewable resources and to reduce overall energy use by 22 percent by 2025. Those goals resume in 2017 -- unless they are supplanted by new legislation. SB 310's committee creation virtually guarantees such new laws.

Kasich's decision to delay Ohio's greening is somewhat surprising. He has been tough on requirements regarding hydraulic fracturing, perhaps recognizing it as an inherently risky business despite the economic boom it has precipitated statewide.

Just two months ago, the Environmental Defense Fund praised Kasich for working with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to develop policies to plug "fugitive emissions" from oil and gas well sites. So environmentalists were optimistic that he might veto SB 310 even though it would buck big utilities, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers.

Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, Ohio must still gird itself for compliance with new federal initiatives announced earlier this month to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Similar to criticism of green initiatives at the state level, these federal guidelines have been bashed by skeptics who say that nothing the U.S. does to protect the environment will be of any use unless other countries climb aboard.

The concern is that a nation like China, which is modelling itself on observation of decades of U.S. dominance through coal-burning energy models, will be loath to curtail its own growth by the same means. So the U.S. will place itself at a competitive disadvantage by adopting more stringent anti-pollution measures while other countries blithely generate dirty energy, and the earth loses anyway.

The problem with this perspective is that it is so shortsighted, putting the concerns of today ahead of the problems of tomorrow. Whatever missteps may have been made in chronicling climate change and its threats, surely nobody believes it is in the best long-term interest of people in any country to breathe dirty air and slowly boil beneath clouds of smog.

If the U.S. took a principled stand here -- not one that put us behind the proverbial financial eight-ball but rather one that allows for systematic reductions, like the Ohio plan and the larger, more ambitious federal plan while still allowing for economic growth -- would it not stand to reason that other countries would step up and attempt to quell their own pollutants?

We all expect that when we flip a switch, lights will come on, but few of us think about how that happens and what long-term effects energy creation has. If our leaders poured more money into renewable sources and energy efficiency, along with smart grids and other efforts to maximize the energy that -- for now -- must be generated via coal, we'd be much better off long-term.

Unfortunately for us, the only term Gov. Kasich is worried about is the one he wants voters to elect him to in November. How else to explain his willingness to cave to big utilities and out-of-state lobbyists at the expense of Ohio's air quality?